My latest animation: "I'm walking here!"

Top 5 Essentials of Animating Creatures

My Hyper Light Drifter Fan Animation

Dancing and Martial Arts on Demo Reels?

With my current AAU class almost over and Online Workshops always busy I do get to see a lot of shots and reels, and I answer a lot of the same questions. One of the topics involves dancing and martial arts shots.
Now, this is purely subjective, but here are my 2 cents:
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11 Second Club - June 2013 Competition

Yeah, once again, not gonna happen. I'm telling you, the moment I wanted to do the 11 Second Club competition every month for practice purposes was the beginning of having absolutely no time whatsoever.

100 Frame Animation Contest "Dangerous Job" - Winner

Absolutely epic voting this time!
Usually I show the selection to a few people at work and we all vote. But we ended up with three ties! So one by one I asked more animators via email and Twitter AROUND THE WORLD! Dun Dun Duuuuuuuuh! It was truly epic. Each new round had new favorites, then more ties, etc. etc.
But eventually, a winner rose to the top! And it's:

Star Trek Into Darkness - Final Trailer

Sweet new trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness! This was my 2nd Star Trek movie to work on and it was again a blast! There's a lot of variety on a show like that, from creatures to digital stunt doubles, vehicles, weaponry and camera work!

DVD Review: Adventures in Plymptoons!

First off, a big thank you goes to Cassie Brewer for sending me a review copy of "Adventures of Plymptoons"!
Every animator knows Bill Plympton, even if it's just a peripheral knowledge of his work. But I have to admit that I wasn't that familiar with his life and his journey to becoming one of the most famous independent animators. So watching this DVD was something I was looking forward to.
For a quick overview, here are the official details:
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Head turns - The Master - 2nd teaser trailer

Sounds silly, but I'm a huge fan of head turns. Head twists, tilts, etc. A line of dialogue can have a totally different meaning with a slight adjustment of the head (like the head moving up in "True Blood").

Facial poses can ruin everything

A lot of times maquettes have a cool body pose, but then the face just ruins it all. Enter these two from Star Wars.
The Grievous/Shaak Ti could have been really cool, but look at Shaak Ti's facial expression! Same with Asajj. It's so emotionless, what is going on?!
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Practice, practice, practice!

Isn't there a saying that you need to get a thousand crappy drawings out of your system before you get a good one? Well, the same is true about computer animation. You have to practice and not be burdened with the pressure that every shot or sequence you start will end up on your demo reel (more about this in a later post). And my plan is to do just that.
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Cloverball - and the importance of having fun

After a brief start in 2008 where I blocked out the first 5 shots I have now finally finished this little sequence last week and I had a blast working on it! But there's a little story behind it.

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In my first character animation class, taught by the awesome Lisa Mullins, I learned what "animation jerk off" was. It was this clip: